DHS: ‘Domestic violent extremists’ are ‘infiltrating’ the abortion debate thumbnail

DHS: ‘Domestic violent extremists’ are ‘infiltrating’ the abortion debate

By Center For Security Policy

What would we do without the Department of Homeland Security? Those intrepid defenders of our liberties are showing these days how richly they deserve our taxpayer billions, as DHS officials, ever on the watch, warned on Monday that “domestic violent extremists” are “infiltrating” the national debate over abortion, with nefarious plans to “incite violence amongst their supporters.”

Now, I must admit, I’m not as sharp as the all the knives in the drawer over at the DHS, and I don’t have my finger on the pulse of threats to “our democracy,” which Leftists are constantly telling us is in imminent peril from people who believe in the U.S. Constitution and the basic goodness of the American experiment. So I hope that Alejandro Mayorkas and his henchmen, that is, colleagues, at the DHS will forgive me for not realizing that domestic violent extremists have only recently infiltrated the abortion debate. I had the crazy idea that domestic violent extremists had actually infiltrated the abortion debate decades ago; in fact, I thought they had been there from the very beginning. After all, there are people out there who think that those who dismember babies in the womb are performing a decent and righteous act; if that’s not domestic violent extremism, what is?

But that is, of course, not the kind of domestic violent extremism that the DHS has in mind. To be sure, our intrepid defenders didn’t specify exactly what kind of domestic violent extremism they did have in mind. ABC News reported that the DHS official who disclosed this warning “did not specify which side, if any, the extremists were taking.” However, it’s not hard to figure out which side the DHS has in mind. The FBI, as well as DHS officials, have quite frequently repeated the claim that “white supremacists” are the most formidable “domestic extremist” threat that the nation faces today.

This is an administration that has likened parents who have protested at school board meetings against Communist indoctrination and transgender propaganda in public schools to terrorists, while not saying a thing about genuine Antifa violence and thuggery, so when the DHS warns that “domestic violent extremists” are infiltrating the abortion debate, it’s absolutely certain that the people they are tarring with this label are pro-lifers. And while there have been a handful of pro-lifers who were violent in the past, it’s far more likely that DHS is equating dissenting words with violence.

Why do I say that? Because it has happened to me. Last year, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), an organization created by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube to police terrorism on the Internet, bizarrely designated my organization Jihad Watch a “violent extremist” group, despite the fact that pretty much all we do is type and report on jihad activity in the U.S. and around the world. In response to a letter from my attorney demanding a retraction, the GIFCT refused to back down. Those who designated Jihad Watch as a “violent extremist” group explained that we reported on violent activity — terrorist bombings, murders, etc. — and that this in some way “dehumanized” Muslims.

How we did this was left unexplained; it would have been impossible to explain, as it was absurd on its face. If reporting news that puts some group in a bad light is “dehumanizing,” the GIFCT and DHS should go after the establishment media for “dehumanizing” Trump and his supporters. The response to my attorney’s letter was essentially the increasingly common Leftist argument that speech that dissents from its party line is violence, and hence must be shut down.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, fresh from defending his sinister and Orwellian new Disinformation Governance Board, promises that his department is right on top of this alleged “domestic violent extremist” threat: “Over the past year, we in the Department of Homeland Security have improved and strengthened our approach to combating this dynamic, evolving threat.”

How reassuring. Meanwhile, Leftist pro-abortion ideologues have been demonstrating at the homes of the Supreme Court Justices who are likely to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade in a naked attempt to intimidate them into changing their vote. Despite the fact that it is a felony to demonstrate at private homes, the Biden administration has applauded these protests. The government is presently in the hands of thugs who believe that bullying and frightening people into submission is an acceptable political tactic. Can the DHS, in such an environment, spare even a few agents to try to head off any possible Leftist violence regarding a possible overturning of Roe? After all, Leftists are much, much more likely to be violent than pro-lifers. This is true both historically and recently and is indicated by the nature of what they’re so avidly defending.

AUTHOR

Robert Spencer

Senior Fellow.

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.